How YOU Can Crack Conformity

A common refrain I hear from people who are black pilled or people that are beginning to see what the world is really like is:

“But what can I do?”

They feel like as a solitary voice that the risks, and there are risks when it comes to speaking your mind in today’s world, very real risks that are increasing daily, they feel like these risks outweigh the benefits. They feel as if by speaking up all they are doing is inviting personal attacks or in some cases even personal ruin. For these people it seems easier to just go with the flow and wait for either a savior to come save them or a cataclysmic event to make it all come crashing down. Then, when that happens, they can finally feel safe speaking out, even though at point it won’t really do much good.

First of all I want to say that I understand these people. And I’m not here to berate them or tell them that their fears are unwarranted. But what I am going to say is that they are underestimating power of what one voice can have. I mean, I’m just one voice, but that’s not even really the point, the point is that you’re not the only one that just wants to go with the flow. You might not know it, but you are likely acquainted, maybe even closely, with people who feel the exact same way but are feeling the same pressures you do to publicly conform to the norm and if you spoke out, that’s all it would take for them to realize they weren’t as outnumbered as they thought that they were and it would give them the courage to speak out as well. This is established science.

In the 1950s Solomon Asch conducted conformity experiments at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. In the experiments he would present a room full of test subjects with a card that had one line on the left and then three lines on the right. The line on the left would match the length of one of the lines on the right on each card. He would tell his test subjects that the experiment was to determine how well people could judge the lengths of the lines. What he didn’t tell them was that only one of the people in the room were actually test subjects. The others were all in on the experiment, which had nothing to do with the perception of lines, well, at least not in the way the real test subject thought.

Asch’s real experiment was to see if he could get the real test subject to incorrectly choose a line by having all the fake test subjects incorrectly choose first. He wanted to see if people would go against the evidence that was literally right in front of them in order to agree with the rest of the group. The results were frightening.

While some of the participants defied the group and produced the correct answers which went against the false answers given by the group, 37% of the participants didn’t think for themselves, instead the went along with the group.

When the experiment was concluded, Asch interviewed the participants and found that they incorrectly chose for different reasons. Some he categorized as experiencing a distortion of perception or distortion of judgement. This meant that their ability to even perceive the length of the lines was affected simply because of the input they received from the people around them. Think of it as a type of hypnosis or suggestion. The actually perceived the incorrect answer as the correct answer because the social pressure was more powerful than their ability to perceive reality. Or they doubted their perception so they outsourced it to the people around them. Think of how many people that this applies to today. The media bombards the public with fictional social norms that in no way reflect reality until the majority of the public loses the ability to perceive reality. A good example of this is how Americans grossly overestimate the number of gay people in america. Because of all the gay people on television and in movies, Americans polled by Gallup estimated on average that 23% percent of the population was gay when the real number was 3.8%. That’s a huge difference, and can easily be explained by this distortion of perception and judgement.

Others chose incorrectly knowingly. This he called distortion of action. They knew that they were giving the wrong answers and they did it anyway to get along with the group.

So, as frightening as all of this is, why do I bring this up? Doesn’t this just reinforce the idea that people are going to go along with the group anyway and that speaking up doesn’t matter? Actually no.

Asch performed a variation of the same experiment. In this variation, the fake participants would still choose an incorrect answer but one of the fake participants would answer correctly. This little change made a big difference in the results. By just adding one other person who gave the correct answer, the number of people who conformed to the group dropped down to only 5%. Not only that, the real test subject experienced positive feelings toward the fake participant that gave the correct answer. That is the power that one voice has. By speaking truth in a room full of liars you can drop the conformity rate from 37% all the way down to 5% while at the same time create a bond with the people you are setting an example for. And it’s important to keep speaking the truth because Asch found that these voices were so vital to breaking the conformity that if he removed the participant giving the correct answers halfway through the experiment, that the test subjects would start conforming at the 37% rate.

Now think about how that plays into why they want to censor the dissident voices. They know, because they have the data, that if they remove our voices that the public at large will go right back to conforming to the group. That’s why it’s so important for all of us to speak out, whether it’s at home or at work, school, with your friends, you can be that voice that gives the others the courage to stop conforming. Imagine the ripple effect it would have if everyone watching this did exactly that. They might try, but they can’t censor us all.

Now that you’ve seen this, you know that one voice does make a difference and how crucial it is that the voice is yours.